Get spooked on history

Longmont resident Dori Spence appears transparent in a long-exposure photograph taken Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013 in the balcony at the Rialto Theater Center in downtown Loveland. Spence is a tour guide who will lead a guided walking ghost tour including at the Rialto Theater Center where an apparition of a woman who walks aroud the balcony, never taking a seat, has been reported. (Photo illustration by Steve Stoner/Loveland Reporter-Herald)
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Steve Stoner
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A few of the 25 people standing in front of the Loveland Feed and Grain took flash photographs Saturday night hoping to capture an orb, or the energy coming from a ghost.

Dori Spence, leader of the downtown Loveland guided walking ghost tour, explained how she had seen the apparitions of men leaning against the building's wall; as she talked, the streetlight at Railroad Avenue flickered on and off underneath a full hunter's moon.

"You can't make them perform or show up or do what you want them to do, just because you are there," Spence told her tour group.

Years ago, the apparitions, who did not make their presence known Saturday night, told her that the former grain elevator, built in 1891, served as an unofficial depot and employment official for them when they lived the lives of hobos. They said they used to take the train from town to town, looking for work.

The hobos had a makeshift hobo camp set up by the river south of the grain elevator, where they stayed until they got enough money for a ticket.

A 10-year-old ghost named Billy, or Nathan, depending on whom you ask, visited the grain elevator and, with the help of the hobos, sneaked rides to the depot on Railroad Avenue between Fourth and Fifth streets, according to what Spence heard from an encounter with him.

He told her he wasn't allowed inside the depot, so after he died, he stayed behind so he could go in whenever he wanted.

The Tour of Ghosts

These are some of the stories Spence told during the 11/2-hour tour, one of two she is giving in Loveland for the Halloween season. The second tour will be Tuesday.

Spence, owner of Step in Time, History and Mystery Talks & Tours in Longmont, told 20 ghost stories mixed with the history of the stops along the tour, including buildings, a pocket park and a few alleys.

To gather information for the tour, Spence investigated the buildings for ghosts, in some cases making direct contact, and talked to locals to learn about their encounters with the paranormal.

She and her former business partner, Barb Scott, started the tours in Longmont in 2000, adding Loveland in 2002.

In 2003, Spence co-founded the nonprofit Spooks Inc., or the Society for the Prevention of Ostracization or Obliteration of Kindred Spirits, to provide a reference point for tour participants to learn more about ghosts and paranormal activity.

Spooks, which sponsors the tour, engages in investigations of paranormal activity, holds seminars and educates the public about the positive aspects of the spirit world.

Spence, who also serves as a psychic for law enforcement, does ghost tours at other times of the year, including during the Christmas holidays and the summer.

Before starting the Loveland tour Saturday, Spence gave a lesson on Ghosts 101.

"The psychic sense is the ability to clear your mind enough that you can sense these kind of things," Spence said.

Spence closes her eyes to get rid of other distractions and starts seeing in her mind the stories of the ghosts. She theorizes that people and ghosts have energy in common, and that ghosts have energy remaining after death, she said.

"We're the particle, and they're the wave. We're more grounded. They're airborne. Their energy is lighter. We look solid, but we know we're moving energy," she said. "The things I pick up psychically is energy to energy. It causes a change in my psychic field."

Spence compared a ghost's energy to the moving blades of a fan, which when moving appear transparent. People can look through the blades, seeing the objects behind, as they tend to do with ghosts, she said.

The ghosts Spence encounters typically want to tell her something about history, such as a ghost she met in the alley behind the Rialto Theater Center.

He said he and the other service people who used the back door were just as important as those coming in the front door. He and the janitors and kitchen help when they were alive played an invented game of jackamore in the alley, aiming to throw rocks over two far lines in the dirt, Spence said.

"I have some give me pieces of history I didn't know before," Spence said. "That's always cool when it's validated."

A Other Stops

One of Spence's stops during the tour was to point out Henry's Pub, which used to be the Java Lounge. A ghost there had a fit if anyone smoked in the building and would knock things out of people's hands, she said.

At the Rialto, Spence tells of an apparition of a woman who walks around the balcony, never taking a seat, and the image of a man's figure that can be seen in the projection room.

"There's so much activity in old buildings," Spence said.

The stops on the tour featured older buildings, many of them built in the late 1800s and early 1900s, at a time when people didn't live as long, she said.

Spence has a saying that there is no such thing as nonbelievers in the paranormal.

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